“By Grabthar’s hammer, by the Sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged!”

I was watching Screen Junkies one day and they wound up talking about their upcoming documentary through Fandom about one of the great movies of the late 1990s, Galaxy Quest.  They spoke about a one-night presentation with the people at Fathom Events.

I have always enjoyed the Screen Junkies.  In particular, I am a fan of Dan Murrell, who I got to know through Movie Fights and the Schmoedown. And I loved the movie Galaxy Quest, arguably a better Star Trek movie than many of the Star Trek movies that have been released.  I immediately went and purchased my ticket.

That was around a month ago and tonight was the night for the documentary to be shown.  I made my way to the theater, ready to be informed and entertained.

Murrell, along with producer Roth Cornet, writers Joe Starr and Spencer Gilbert, started the doc off with the Honest Trailer for Galaxy Quest.  Honest Trailer is the online weekly show where they create a trailer of a popular or famous movie and poke fun at it.  They have been nominated for several Emmy Awards for Honest Trailers.  The bit at the beginning was funny and showed some of the personality that this group of people have.

Then the actual documentary started and the film remained entertaining and engaging.

Of course, the subject matter was not earth shaking, but a light-weight romp through the making of a movie, told through interviews with the creators and actors of Galaxy Quest, highlighting the pratfalls and challenges along the way.

Many of the stories told by director Dean Parisot where very funny and insightful.  We got interviews with stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Enrico Colantoni, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell.  There was conversations with Greg Berlanti (Flash/Arrow), Damon Lindelof (LOST) and Mark Johnson (Rain Man, Narnia) as well as other iconic sci-fi stars such as Wil Wheaton and Brent Spiner.

The stories were all funny or filled with a joy that showed just how much this project meant to the creators.

They also spent some time on the importance of treating the fans with respect. In Galaxy Quest, some of the obsessive fans wind up helping save the day and the message is that everyone has value.  It is a very positive message to take from the toxicity of the Internet these days.

One of the most poignant moments was when the cast was discussing the lasting effects of having the late, great Alan Rickman in the cast.  Playing the hoity-toity actor who was tired of his role as Dr. Lazarus, Rickman displayed his dry British wit and it was so apparent that his fellow actors loved him.  This was one of the most emotional sections of the doc and might be the best sequence in the film.  Parisot delivered perhaps the best line of the documentary in recalling a story with Alan Rickman and his feelings towards co-star Tim Allen.

Yes, the documentary may not be the hardest hitting doc you will ever see, but I was entertained by it through the full run time.

“Never give up.  Never surrender.”

3.85 stars 

Netflix continues to release content on a regular basis and it is difficult to keep up with it.  So, while waiting for The Irishman, I watched Between Two Ferns: The Movie, a mockumentary about a local public access show hosted by Zach Galifianakis.  The idea came originally from Zach Galifianakis uploading some shorts to Funny or Die.

The film has some laughs to it, that is sure.  However, the problem to this movie is clear.  Trying to stretch a short comedic bit into a feature length movie is usually a bad idea, and this is no exception.  The concept is strained and gets old quickly.

There are a lot of celebrities involved here.  Will Farrell is here, and I never liked him.  His performance here makes me dislike him even more.  I enjoyed the bit with David Letterman as his dry wit really helped to make this feel more important.

There is a mean spiritedness to the film that gets old after awhile.

The list of the celebs involved in the film is quite impressive.

In the end, I just did not enjoy the film that much.  There are some laughs but there are many more that fall flat.  This should stick to short bits.

2 stars 

There are good and bad things about 21 Bridges.

One major good thing… Chadwick Boseman is a star.  He is the lead of this movie and you can see the confidence and the energy he brings.  Boseman is one of the young guns in movies today.

The bad things… most of the rest.

Chadwick Boseman is brought in to capture or kill two cop killers loose in Manhattan.  After they lock down the island, he realizes that there is more to this story than he has seen.

The film is obvious.  Predictable as can be.  Every twist was painfully obvious and were absolutely no surprise.  J.K. Simmons was underused.

In the end, I do not have much more to say.  Chadwick Boseman deserves more than this.

2 stars

I have had few emotional responses to movies like I had with last year’s documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” about the American icon Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.  It was not like I was a huge Mr. Rogers fan either.  I watched it, but I was much more of an Electric Company guy (with Spider-man) and a Sesame Street fan (for the Muppets).  So the tears at that documentary was a major surprise.

Hearing that they were doing a Mr. Rogers biopic starring Tom Hanks made me very happy and I anticipated more emotions.

There were some differences for this film.  First, it actually was not a biopic about Mr. Rogers.  Fred Rogers was really a supporting player in a story about a reporter for Esquire magazine Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) who had been assigned to write a puff piece on Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks).  Lloyd and his family dynamic was the emphasis of the movie and Mr. Rogers played a part.  This was inspired by a true story and was based on the book, “Can You Say…Hero.”

Then, while this movie did have some good emotional feels to it, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood did not have the wallop that the documentary had.

That is not saying that this movie was bad because I enjoyed it a great deal.  It just felt as if the advertising made this out to be a Mr. Rogers movie where the main focus was on Lloyd.

Lloyd had all kinds of problems in his life including dealing with a new baby, an estranged father who had returned into his life, and an editor who gave him the interview with Fred Rogers because no one else on the list would agree to talk to him.  His reputation for hatchet jobs was becoming known and Lloyd went into his interview with Mr. Rogers with the idea of finding if he was “real” or not.

Matthew Rhys does a very solid job here, which is made even more compelling since he is sharing scenes with one of my generation’s greatest actors in Tom Hanks.  Hanks, one of the nicest people around, is the perfect choice to portray Mr. Rogers.  Hanks does not try to imitate Rogers, but instead encompasses the spirit of the man.  I never found myself thinking, “Oh, that is Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers” which is a complement for Tom Hanks’ ability.

Chris Cooper has an impactful role as Lloyd’s father Jerry.  Lloyd and Jerry had been estranged for years after Jerry left the children with his sick wife.  Cooper brings a lot of energy and life into the man attempting to reconnect with his family.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is heartfelt and enjoyable.  The scene they showed in the trailer of the children serenading Mr. Rogers on the subway is as charming and warm as any scene you’ll see this year.  I kind of wish they hadn’t shown it to us in the trailer.  The film is well written and brilliantly acted.  This world today would really use a man like Fred Rogers.

4.4 stars 

I was not a fan of the first Frozen film from Disney.  I did not hate it like some did, but I found it to be a movie that I had trouble connecting with.  It had a great song in “Let it Go” no matter what you think.  Frozen was a massive hit though and it was clear that it was going to receive a sequel.  Would the second film be a better film or would I like it even less?

I am happy to report that I found Frozen II to be a much better movie than the original.  I am not sure if there is a song in the film as good as “Let it Go” but “Lost in the Woods” comes close.

Frozen II brings the audience back to the sisters Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) as the days continue on in Arendelle.  However, trouble strikes again after Elsa begins to hear a strange voice singing from the Enchanted Forest.  The crew of heroes started off in search of the source of the voice and trying to discover how it was connected to Elsa.

Frozen II has utterly beautiful animated scenery that could be real, actual images.  There are some times when I am not sure if the background were actually real images or if it were indeed animated.  Frozen II was a special movie when it came to the pictures on the screen.

The characters are more interesting this time around because we knew more about them and we have already developed our connections with them.  While Olaf (Josh Gad) is still hit and miss for me, he does a Frozen plot recap that is hilarious and one of the highlights of the sequel.

There are some good action involved here as well as our heroes moved into the Enchanted Forest to discover the truth behind the elements.  There are some creative character designs in these characters that fir very well with the rest of the crew.

However, the lack of a real villain does hurt the film and the ending was okay, if not a tad anti-climatic.

Above all else, I enjoyed this one more than I did the first one and the animation is as gorgeous as it can get.  It should be another huge hit for Disney.

4 stars

I got the opportunity to see an early showing of Rian Johnson’s newest film, the whodunnit murder mystery called Knives Out, which debuted at Toronto Film Festival in early September.  I had been anticipating this movie for awhile as I  enjoyed the trailers so I jumped at the chance to see the film about a week early.

It was so worth it. I loved this movie.

This will be a full NON-spoiler review, which means that I won’t be able to talk much about it, but I loved what Rian Johnson did with the murder mystery genre and the way that he played with the tropes.  Knives Out is a brilliantly plotted and extremely entertaining film that messed with my expectations throughout.

This has a sensational cast featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, LaKeith Stanfield, Don Johnson, Christopher Plummer, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Jaedon Martell, and Frank Oz.  The film is highlighted by the off-the-wall performance from Daniel Craig as a southern detective Benoit Blanc.

Craig is utterly perfect in this movie, which is to say he is hamming it up, chewing every last bit of scenery that he could.  The accent that he used for this character was something you just don’t hear much outside of Looney Tunes cartoons.  Somehow, though, it works and that credit must go to Craig.

However, Daniel Craig is not our protagonist of this film.  That honor goes to the young Ana de Armas, who plays Marta, a nurse who was taking care of Christopher Plummer’s patriarch character, Harlan Thrombey.  Ana de Armas has not had a ton of films to her credit, most notably being Blade Runner 2049 so it makes one wonder how she, in a cast like this, is the main character.  However, she is just tremendous and this character is well developed with a character trait that I have never seen before.  You’ll know it when you see it.

I should also single out Chris Evans.  Captain America himself looks to be having a blast playing a character unlike his heroic alter ego.

All of the members of the Thrombey family are just rotten people but, most of them, are real people and not caricatures.  They interact with each other in such a funny and real way that you forget some of them are so over the top.

Knives Out is laugh out loud funny, with biting dialogue and a wonderfully organized plot.  There will be some who will complain about a section of the film dealing with today’s political scene, but if that is what derails this movie for you, then I’m sorry for you.

I cannot recommend this movie enough.  It is due to come out nationwide Thanksgiving.  Do yourself a favor and go see it.  It is charming and funny,  an old fashion whodunnit featuring a ton of oddball characters played by iconic actors having the time of their lives.

5 stars

When you are enjoying your subscription to Disney Plus, don’t forget about Netflix, because Netflix just dropped one of the best animated movies of the year, just in time for the Christmas holiday (well…okay, Thanksgiving, but you get the idea.)

Klaus is a re-imagining of the Santa Claus mythos that is as charming and heart felt as any film I have seen in a long time.

A simple act of kindness always sparks another.

Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) was a spoiled brat of a man who exploited his family’s money to live a pampered and lazy life.  His lack of interest in the family job as a postman worried his father so he banished his son to an island called Smeerensburg with the near impossible task of sending 6000 letters in one year.  If he failed, he would be cast out and stripped of his inheritance.

Once in Smeerensburg, Jesper met an old woodsman named Klaus (J.K. Simmons) who was isolated and depressed.  Jesper discovered Klaus’s shed full of handmade toys and he formulated a plan to get the local kids to write letters to Klaus asking for toys in return.  Little did Jesper know how this would strike a positive note into the conflict-laden island.

Smeerensburg had a long time feud between the Krum and the Ellingboe families and the hatred between them had fueled the tone of the land for generations.  Joan Cusack and Will Sasso voiced the respective heads of the two warring families.  These two factions did not like seeing the positivity that had started to sweep through Smeerensburg causing the two families to form a tentative truce to face against a common enemy.

This film is extremely clever and provides a new explanation for many of the Santa Claus iconography such as the cookies and milk, the chimney and the flying reindeer.

The first act of this movie, however, has its share of scary images and moments.  The introduction of a lot of the story is surprisingly dark and even a little twisted.  Yet, by the end of the movie, it is full of warmth and heart and would be a fantastic holiday film that the entire family would enjoy.  The ending has all the feels too as the emotional beats are used prominently.

I also found myself laughing out loud several times throughout the run of Klaus.  It brings every bit of emotion into the film and succeeds in glorious fashion way more than it does not.

The animation is beautiful too, with the character designs standing out above everything else.  SPA Studios and Aniventure create the film, an English language Spanish animated film written and directed by Sergio Pablos.

Klaus was a genuine surprise and watching this made me feel such a range of emotions.  It could develop into one of those classic Christmas movies that you enjoy every year.  It is a triumph.  It is available on Netflix right now.

4.75 stars 

Charlie’s Angels has been around since the 1970s in one form or another.  The most recent version has arrived in the theaters from director Elizabeth Banks.

Unfortunately, I found the new version, with a few exceptions, to be dull and repetitive.  I was not interested in the story and I was surprised how unimpressive I found the performance of Patrick Stewart.

The Angels themselves were the best part of the movie.  Kristen Stewart, especially, was one of the more entertaining aspects of the film.  Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska were nice additions to the Angels and the three of them worked well together.  However, the writing and the dialogue had too many cringe-worthy moments.

I thought Patrick Stewart, who I almost always love, was just phoning this performance in here.  As one of the Bosleys, Stewart was uninspiring and disappointing.  A far drop off from the brilliance of his performance as Charles Xavier in Logan.

Some of the action in the final act was fine, and I did like how they took the decades of Angles lore into account in the new film, but I just did not find much more engaging.

2 stars

I ignored this movie the first week it was out.  I caught up with it this week and I have to say that I did not dislike it as much as I thought I would.  However, there are a couple of major issues with it that really make me uneasy about recommending it.

Emilia Clarke plays Katrina (or Kate as she insists), a young woman with a bad attitude that acts extremely selfish.  Her attitude has pushed her family away and has made her depressed with her life.

When she meets Tom (Henry Golding), an unassuming and kind man, she begins to fall for him, but he is very mysterious, disappearing for several days at a time.

I did enjoy some parts of the film. I thought Emilia Clarke was good as Kate and I thought a bunch of the secondary characters were original and well used.  There may have been too many side plots with these characters, but they were definitely intriguing.

I said that there were some major problems that kept me from fully engaging in this movie.  The biggest problem was that I knew what the big “turn” in the film was going to be back when I saw the trailer.  I kept watching the film, looking at each scene trying to see a place where I would be wrong, but, with each scene, I was even more sure I knew what was happening.  And, of course, I was right.  It is a bad sign when I can see the twist coming in the trailers (and that is without the trailers giving away too much as they sometimes do).

Then, why does this film have such a connection to the music of George Michael?  We get a ton of George Michael songs and Wham songs, whether they make sense with the story or not.  I know Last Christmas is a Wham song (although I do not think I had ever heard it before today) but why does that mean we need “Freedom!” or “Faith.”  I found all the George Michael distracting.

Directed by Paul Feig, Last Christmas was co-written by Emma Thompson, who also appeared as Katrina’s mother, Petra.

I am very split on this movie.  It was better than I expected it to be, but the problems with the movie prevented me from enjoying it fully.  I am on the fence with this.

2.9 stars

I am not a fan of auto racing, not even a little bit.  So when the critics say that you do not have to like auto racing to like the new movie, Ford v Ferrari, you can believe them because I loved this movie.

Ford v Ferrari is the true story of how the Ford Motor Company decided to compete and win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race in France that had been won by rival car company, Ferrari, for several years.

Ford Company, led by Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), hired former race car driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to help design a car that could beat the cars from Ferrari.  Shelby brought in brilliant, but troublesome driver Ken Mills (Christian Bale) to help create and eventually drive the car.

Ford Motor Company had personal problems with Ken, especially weaselly Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) who held a personal grudge against Ken.  Ford consistently threw roadblocks in the path of Ken, before the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Honestly, the movie is not really Ford v Ferrari as much as it is Ford v Ken and Shelby.  The rivalry with Ferrari is in the film, but it is significantly in the background of the narrative.  It was vitally important for Henry Ford II to jump into Le Mans, but after that, it is an after thought.

Christian Bale is always great, and this is no exception.  He loses a lot of weight for this role once more and throws himself into Ken Miles.  We get a lot from Ken and his family, his wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe).  Jupe has been a wonderful child actor and he has some really solid work here too.

Matt Damon is every bit as much of the star of this movie as Bale.  Shelby starts off with a heart problem that forces him out from behind the wheel of the race cars.  Damon and Bale have amazing chemistry with one another and you fully believe in their friendship.

The race scenes are very well done and, apparently, are combinations of practical effects and CGI.  I can honestly say that I could not tell what was practical and what was CGI.  I saw the film on the IMAX screen which showed this film in the best possible aspect.

The film is very long (over two and a half hours) but truly did not feel as if it were long.  The flow of the movie moved along tremendously well and kept everything working together.  There are some scenes of emotion that work as does the humor.

Ford v Ferrari is a very strong film with some top notch performances and a compelling story.  The third act race is about as well done as you are going to get.

4.4 stars

The Good Liar is the new film from director Bill Condon, featuring two legendary actors, Sir Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren.

McKellen is a con man, out to find a wealthy widow that he can scam out of her money.  He has plenty of irons in the fire but he was looking for that windfall.  Mirren is that wealthy widow who is searching for something since the death of her husband.

They hit it off immediately and seem to form a bond, to the dismay of Mirren’s grandson.

There is no doubt about the best part of this film.  Helen Mirren has always been a personal favorite of mine.  She always is fantastic, even if the film itself is not good.  And Ian McKellen made his name in geek culture as Magneto and Gandalf.  Putting these legends together is a wonderful treat.

Watching these characters interact was charming and warm, even though you knew there was a darkness at the heart.

I was enjoying the film as it was moving along, but I had some real problems with the third act.  The film feels as if it falls apart in the end for a couple of reasons, both of which would be considered spoilers so I am going to have to just say that the third act was quite a step down in my opinion.  It was painfully obvious what was happening making it pretty predictable and silly.

Even though the ending was not as strong as the first part of the movie, I enjoyed the rest of the film enough to give this a pass.  There were some satisfying, albeit hard to believe, moments in the end and two amazing actors.

3.15 stars

Classic animated movies being rebooted as live action has been the trend over the last few years and now the most recent version has come to Disney + as Lady and the Tramp joins the ranks of Aladdin, Lion King, Jungle Book and Cinderella.

Sure, the original 1959 animated version of this movie may not have been in the same class of those movies, but there is at least one iconic scene everybody knows that involves spaghetti.

This is a very good choice of film to place on Disney + for its start up because it is well known enough to get eyes on it, but it would not make the millions of dollars at the box office as many of the other live-action movies have done.   Here it is one more positive for Disney +.

As for the film itself, it is good.  I enjoyed watching it on my own TV.  I wonder if my opinion would have been different had I paid money for it at a theater.

Prim and proper house dog Lady (voiced by Tessa Thompson winds up on the street and meets scroungy street dog Tramp (Justin Theroux) and the pair form a bond, despite being pursued by the overly-dedicated dogcatcher (Adrian Martinez).

The talking dogs are a problem here, just as the talking lions were a problem in The Lion King.  The facial expressions are not right and the mouth just moving can be creepy and off-putting, not the response that the film would want.  However, it did become less so as the film progressed so it may have been that I got more used to it than I was at the start.  The CGI on the mouth was acceptable for a streaming service film, but would have been more of a problem in a big budget released film.

The voice acting was fine, especially that of the wondrous voice of Sam Elliot as Trusty.  Among the live action actors, Yvette Nicole Brown stood out as the cruel and mean-spirited Aunt Sarah.

As a family film, Lady and the Tramp is a must see.  There is a wonderful goodness about the tale and the characters.  It may not be the upper echelon of Disney movies, but it is still quite recognizable and a perfect starter for Disney +.

3.3 stars 

I was looking through Netflix and I realized that I had not seen very many documentaries this year.  So I decided that I would watch several of the docs over the next month to get ready to see which one was the best one around. All these have been released in 2019.

I started on Netflix and watched a short one (around 42 minutes) called Fire in Paradise.  This told the story of a terrible camp fire in 2017 that decimated a town in California named Paradise.  This was totally shocking and tense, seeing pictures and cell phone images from the heart of the blaze.  The interviews with the people who survived this encounter was absolutely heart wrenching.  You could almost feel the heat coming through the screen. This doc was seriously good.

4 stars

Next doc I moved over to Hulu to watch The Amazing Johnathan but this one was less involving to me than the last one.  Johnathan is a magician who found out that he had a heart condition, and that was something that I was not interested in seeing.  I did not find Benjamin Berman that charming and the doc went into a different path that was odd.

2 stars

I had had the chance to see this one in the theaters, but I did not want to see it.  That was too bad, because The Biggest Little Farm was tremendous.  I would have loved to see it in the movie theater.  This told the story of a couple and their dog in an attempt to bring an area of farmland outside of Los Angeles back to life.  They faced all kinds of problems from birds to coyote to soil that was “dead.”  This was wonderfully education and as compelling as could be. I should not have skipped this one.

4.4 stars

Next up on Hulu was a documentary called Jawline and it was about a 16-year old boy named Austyn Tester, who wanted to build a career by posting videos on YouTube and Instagram.  This film was interesting because it followed the young man who had some initial success, but apparently wound up back in his life in Tennessee.  The film discusses some of the drawbacks of social media too.  While interesting, I would have liked to know more, go deeper.  It never seemed to go fully into the theme.  It was entertaining though.

3.3 stars

The final one today on Hulu is Ask Dr. Ruth which is the story of iconic sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s life, career and influence to the world.  The documentary included more than just the sex talk that she had became famous for, but also looked at her past, including her escaping the Holocaust and how she grew up to be Dr. Ruth.  Ruth Westheimer is such a charming and funny person who is able to speak so honestly that you can understand why she became such a sensation.

4.5 stars

More to come later…looking for the time to watch the Bob Dylan/Martin Scorsese doc on Netflix.

Edit:  BTW…Dr. Ruth was a sniper.

Yeah… 

It’s been a while since we have had a good pulp noir film, and Edward Norton’s passion project fills that gap respectfully.

Norton is the writer/director/lead actor of this new film. Motherless Brooklyn, which tells the story of a detective whose boss/friend gets killed in pursuit of a big case.  Lionel (Ed Norton) has some version of Tourette’s Syndrome, though that name is never used, and it gets in his way as he tries to weave his way through the complicated case at the heart of his friend Frank’s(Bruce Willis) death.

The film is slow and it is long, but I did not find either of those as a drawback to the movie.  I found this interesting and engaging.  It was a mystery story that we had to uncover exactly what had happened.  We knew the result and who committed the crime, but we had to discover the reasons.

Part of that had to do with Alec Baldwin’s big bad New York developer character, Moses Randolph.  I am not really sure where the inspiration for this character came from… (just kidding).

The story took place in the 1950s in New York.  The atmosphere of the film was one of the best parts.  The atmosphere helps make the noir successful.  Ed Norton did the voice over and it worked.

The performances were good to great.  The story was fine.  I had picked out the “surprise” part early on so that did not shock me.  And there was some epic music happening with the score too.

I believe that watching this movie requires patience, because it is a slow burn, but the trip is worth it.  These days of instant gratification, this is a throwback to the old days of movies.

4.1 stars

I legitimately had no idea anything about director Bong Joon Ho’s newest film, Parasite.  All I knew about it was that it was an international film (I am not even sure if I knew it was a Korean film although I did know it was subtitled) and that a bunch of the online critics that I like and respect claim that it is one of the best movies of the year.

I even did not realize who Bong Joon Ho was.  Later on I discovered he was the director of Snowpiercer (which I loved) and Okja (which, not so much).

I have seen some older Korean movies this year, Old Boy and Train to Busan, but those did not give me any idea what I might be seeing.  I thought maybe the parasite in the title of the movie might be some kind of plague like the zombies in Train.

So I really did go into this movie with as much of a blank slate as you are going to get in this world of social media and easy accessible online trailers.

I am glad that I knew so little because it was able to let me move along with the story and allow the movie to provide its twists and turns as it is meant to be.

I don’t want to spoil anything so you can have a chance to go in as fresh as I was, but the film features two families of differing classes that intersect with each other in a strange and original way.

The cast is great.  All of these actors brought the goods here, creating characters that were appealing despite being people that may not be the grandest example of humanity.  You can understand all of them and relate to them which is quite a feat.

The film is shot beautifully and the contrasts between the classes were distinct.  The film has many great moments of humor and also has some dramatic darkness.  Midway through the second act, the film shifts a little bit to become even darker than it had been up until that point.

It is one of the top international films of the year and should be an Oscar contender.  Go in with as little knowledge as I did.  It is worth it.

4 stars